Russia loses connection with CIS forever

One by one, Russia gradually loses its ties with the world. The Commonwealth of Independent States refuse to celebrate Great Fatherland War Victory.

According to Svetlana Gamova, a journalist at the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper, "Russia is losing the last and, if you like, the most important thing which connects it with the CIS countries – Victory in the Great Fatherland War." Since this year, the countries prefer to stick to the term of World War II.

While all of them will mark the date, they will do so at home rather than in Moscow and under their own colors rather than the black and yellow of the St. George ribbon, a decoration that she suggests "has become the simple of the splitting apart of the Commonwealth of Independent States," Euromaidan Press reports.

The Kremlin has tried to play down this trend, she continues, excusing Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka's decision to mark the anniversary in Mensk not Moscow, but "ordinary Russians as always have read between the lines: Lukashenka is openly distancing himself from Moscow," something confirmed by his decision not to use the St. George ribbon.

Lukashenka is hardly alone, Gamova says. Leaders in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova have taken equally demonstrative steps to show that they will commemorate World War II in their own way and not jointly with the Russian one or employing the symbols that Moscow prefers, the article writes.

"Many experts in the CIS countries suggest that this … is the result of the work of NGOs and Western embassies," the Moscow journalist says, another example of the way in which many in that region seem incapable of accepting the idea that peoples and governments can ever act on their own.

But one "fact" is obvious, the "Nezavisimaya gazeta" journalist concludes: "We have lost that space which for many years we considered traditionally a zone of Russian influence … and we will have to celebrate Victory Day in a dramatically shrinking circle of former fellow fighters," the news agency sums up.